36,000 Gigatons of Carbon Heralded History's Biggest Mass Extinction (arstechnica.com) 79
New insights into the end-Permian mass extinction 252 million years ago. From a report: The end-Permian mass extinction was a big deal. It was the largest mass extinction event ever and occurred 252 million years ago. A whopping 90 percent of all marine species and around 70 percent of their terrestrial kin were killed off. Over the years, there have been numerous efforts to look into this massive, world-changing event. The end-Permian mass extinction was coincident with mass eruptions in the Siberian Traps, and some potential scenarios include volcanism driving acid rain, volcanism triggering the burning of coal (which released greenhouses gases into the atmosphere), and a reduction in the availability of oxygen in the ocean, among others. However, a new paper relies on previously unused data and modeling to dig into the matter.
In all, the study found that 36,000 gigatons of carbon -- mostly from volcanic sources -- were released into the atmosphere over a relatively short span of 15,000 years. This period also saw the global average temperature rise a staggering amount, from 25C to 40C. While researchers previously explored volcanism and carbon as potential causes for the massive extinction, this work provides more insight into the event, said Wolfram Kurschner, a geologist at the University of Oslo and one of the authors of the paper. "Until now, it was really difficult to quantify the amount of CO2 that was released to the atmosphere," Kurschner told Ars.
In all, the study found that 36,000 gigatons of carbon -- mostly from volcanic sources -- were released into the atmosphere over a relatively short span of 15,000 years. This period also saw the global average temperature rise a staggering amount, from 25C to 40C. While researchers previously explored volcanism and carbon as potential causes for the massive extinction, this work provides more insight into the event, said Wolfram Kurschner, a geologist at the University of Oslo and one of the authors of the paper. "Until now, it was really difficult to quantify the amount of CO2 that was released to the atmosphere," Kurschner told Ars.
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Not that I expect an AC troll to care, but the dinosaurs didn't appear until after the event. In the way that the CT mass extinction cleared the deck for the subsequent rise of the mammals this mass extinction appears to have done the same for dinosaurs.
All accounted for. (Score:2)
How much was released by burning everything (vegetation, animals, etc)?
It doesn't matter. (Score:4, Informative)
Animals and vegetation are considered to be part of the active carbon cycle. The conversion into and out of organic participation happens instantaneously from a geologic perspective. That's why burning firewood doesn't really matter for climate change, but burning fossil fuels does. The fossil fuels were subtracted out of the carbon cycle long ago, but at a far faster rate than they were sequestered. ...and... Internet! Tell me I'm wrong.
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Lovely English... "...but are being reintroduced at a far faster rate..."
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Lovely English...
It must suck to be you.
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Oh shit, sorry. I thought you were some one else obnoxiously correcting another's typos.
My bad!
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Animals and vegetation are considered to be part of the active carbon cycle. The conversion into and out of organic participation happens instantaneously from a geologic perspective. That's why burning firewood doesn't really matter for climate change, but burning fossil fuels does. The fossil fuels were subtracted out of the carbon cycle long ago, but at a far faster rate than they were sequestered. ...and... Internet! Tell me I'm wrong.
I'm going to have to get to some original papers here. Hit a pay site, but I can get that free. Apparently there must have been much more CO2 released than Sulfur Dioxide, which we all know has a cooling effect. But the Siberian traps were mind bogglingly huge, the earth must have looked like a sci-fi movie from space some times. If it was overloaded toward CO2, yeah - freaky weather.
Perspective (Score:2)
This is about 100 times what humans have done since the start of industrialization. We've released about 375 billion tons, but in 2019 we released 43 Gt, so if the numbers from random sites that I Googled are correct, we'll more than double that in a decade.
Re:Perspective and time. (Score:5, Interesting)
So 36000GT / 15000 yrs = 2.4 Giga tons per year. If your number of 43 Gt in 2019 is correct that means we are releasing carbon 20 times as fast as an event which caused mass extinctions and devastation.
My perspective is that 20 times as fast as something disastrous sounds pretty serous.
Re:Perspective and time. (Score:4, Insightful)
My perspective is that 20 times as fast as something disastrous sounds pretty serous.
It is designed to mislead and alarm you. Not that the 36000GT is calculated over 15000 yrs. This is as old as our human civilization - 15000 years ago we were making stone tipped spears. The actual emissions during Permian-Triassic mass extinction happened over much shorter window, resulting in much higher emission rate, it just we don't have resolution to narrow it down to shorter time window. Just look at atmospheric concentrations of CO2 - disaster happened at 10x to 50x atmospheric CO2 concentration we have right now. Yes, CO2 emissions are a concern and we should do something, but it isn't as catastrophic as TFA wants you to believe.
Re:Perspective and time. (Score:5, Interesting)
My perspective is that 20 times as fast as something disastrous sounds pretty serous.
The actual emissions during Permian-Triassic mass extinction happened over much shorter window, resulting in much higher emission rate, it just we don't have resolution to narrow it down to shorter time window.
This is, I think a legitimate comment, however I was largely responding to the grandparent of your comment which was acting as if the vast quantity showed that our current releases were trivial. I think we can, instead, say we don't really have a basis for comparison until we have a way to work out, approximately, what rate of release was sustained for how long.
Just look at atmospheric concentrations of CO2 - disaster happened at 10x to 50x atmospheric CO2 concentration we have right now. Yes, CO2 emissions are a concern and we should do something, but it isn't as catastrophic as TFA wants you to believe.
I don't think this means what you think it means. If the concentrations at the time were tens of times what they are now, then the release of the same amount of CO2 will have made a smaller (relative) change in concentration. That would mean we should be more concerned about it, albeit taking into consideration the earlier comment about lack of knowledge of the rate of release, maybe this shouldn't be the major reason for us to be concerned. Instead the best available models of change now should be taken into account.
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15000 years ago we were making stone tipped spears.
They were really good spear tips though, be honest.
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AleRunner mused:
So 36000GT / 15000 yrs = 2.4 Giga tons per year. If your number of 43 Gt in 2019 is correct that means we are releasing carbon 20 times as fast as an event which caused mass extinctions and devastation.
My perspective is that 20 times as fast as something disastrous sounds pretty serous.
It's actually quite a bit worse than that.
The rapid rise (on a geological timescale) in CO2 at the start of the P-T extinction event also caused the release of many gigatons of methane: first from melting of the Arctic permafrost (there was no Antarctic landmass at the time), which allowed the dead vegetation from the glacial event which preceded the eruption of the Siberian Traps to decay, releasing swamp gas (something that's only starting to happen today); then with the melting of methane
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we are releasing carbon 20 times as fast as an event which caused mass extinctions and devastation.
The carbon release seems to have been a trailing effect rather than a cause. In any case it's not certain.
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China... numbah won.
The top 20 emitters of CO2 are responsible for 78% of total global emissions.
The following countries are the ten largest emitters of carbon dioxide:
China (9.3 GT)
United States (4.8 GT)
India (2.2 GT)
Russia (1.5 GT)
Japan (1.1 GT)
Germany (0.7 GT)
South Korea (0.6 GT)
Iran (0.6 GT)
Canada (0.5 GT)
Saudi Arabia (0.5 GT)
Re: MORE Perspective (Score:1)
https://ourworldindata.org/con... [ourworldindata.org]
- the United States has emitted more CO2 than any other country to date: at around 400 billion tonnes since 1751, it is responsible for 25% of historical emissions;
this is twice more than China – the world’s second largest national contributor;
- the 28 countries of the European Union (EU-28) – which are grouped together here as they typically negotiate and set targets on a collaborative basis – is also a large historical contributor at
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200 renminbi in Chang's account! Well said loyal comrade!
In comparison (Score:5, Informative)
The end-Permian extinction was about 2.4 GT/year for 15,000 years
Our current global CO2 emissions are estimated to be about 43 GT/year (2019) but that is obviously over a much shorter period of time.
Not trying to make a point here, just providing some datapoints for comparison purposes.
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The end-Permian extinction was about 2.4 GT/year for 15,000 years
That presumes the eruption was steady, which is unlikely.
The Siberian eruption may have been triggered by an antipodal asteroid impact [wikipedia.org]. If so, there likely would have been a massive burst of CO2 which then tapered off.
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You are correct. I should have said 2.4 GT/year average over 15,000 years.
Given that CO2 lingers in the atmosphere on a scale of hundreds (but not thousands) of years, it's likely that it was a handful of events (or even one event) that had insanely large CO2 releases followed by periods where CO2 gradually leeched out of the atmosphere.
I guess we are running the experiment now where we see what a steady stream of emissions looks like vs. a few massive spikes.
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I guess we are running the experiment now where we see what a steady stream of emissions looks like vs. a few massive spikes.
One possible outcome is mass extinction. The other possible outcome is slightly warmer Earth where massive tracts of land (North Canada, Greenland, Siberia) become much more habitable while some places near equator experience desertification - still a net gain for humanity and a clear benefit (unless you live in Middle East or Amazon). Why are we exclusively talking about doomsday scenario?
Re:In comparison (Score:5, Informative)
The other possible outcome is slightly warmer Earth where massive tracts of land (North Canada, Greenland, Siberia) become much more habitable while some places near equator experience desertification - still a net gain for humanity and a clear benefit (unless you live in Middle East or Amazon). Why are we exclusively talking about doomsday scenario?
Even if some land does become more fertile, the mere movement of ecosystems will lead to a mass loss of species which aren't able to move or end up unlucky during the move. There's a more fundamental problem with the idea of increased land use at higher lattitude. It's worth looking at an equal area projection of the world [map-projections.net]. When you do that you will realise that the land loss at the equator will be huge whilst, at higher lattitudes where the distance around the line of lattitude is much smaller, your land gains do not compensate. There's a massive overall loss to humanity.
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The land loss will be a result of the horse latitudes moving, the land around the equator won't be lost. It's not at all clear that the horse latitudes will move as a result of climate change, though.
Re: In comparison (Score:3)
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You may want to look at a real globe, or at least an equal-area map of the world, before saying silly things.
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In addition to geography, it is also important to understand geology.
Much of northern Canada is covered by the exposed rocks of the Canadian Shield [wikipedia.org], and is not suitable for agriculture.
Re:In comparison (Score:4, Informative)
Do you know what the land in the far north is like which you claim will become "more habitable"? You probably don't, it's mostly granite which was scraped clean by the last advance of the ice sheets and now only has a thin and easily eroded covering of soil. No one is going to be planting wheat fields in the Yukon, and Irkutsk isn't going to become a summer vacation spot.
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The Siberian traps didn't just explode all in one day. The "eruption" was probably more like Mauna Kea, less like Mount St. Helens.
Geologically, and probably in comparison to things like the traps too, there's nothing "steady stream" about what we're doing. It's a spike that ramped up almost instantaneously, will last an insignificant amount of time, and will ramp down even faster.
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I think what we are doing now is equivalent to one of those massive spikes. Volcanoes of that size erupted for decades, so a somewhat similar time period to the current man-made CO2 emission, and thus very roughly the same length "spikes". Still lots of unknowns but it seems like the rates are much closer than either extreme (one extreme being that the emission was constant for 15K years, the opposite extreme is that it was all emitted in one day by an asteroid or something).
Re: In comparison (Score:3)
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The end-Permian extinction was about 2.4 GT/year for 15,000 years
Our current global CO2 emissions are estimated to be about 43 GT/year (2019).
What were the atmospheric concentration and sequestration rates now and then?
Let me DuckDuckGo it for you:
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Of course the Sun is now hotter. IIRC it is about 1C every 100 million years for solar forced warming and means less CO2 to reach the same global temperatures.
36,000 giga tons is same as ... (Score:2, Insightful)
Of course, we still will have Neanderthals talking about school buses lined up end to end, lengths pf football fields, libraries of congress, and the Olympic size swimming pools. But that is no reason why at least few of us to use more sane units and numbers.
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Hmm, maybe we can even use SI! Which would make it 36 exagrams....
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number of bytes is not a SI unit.
Re: 36,000 giga tons is same as ... (Score:2)
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Perhaps, but culturally inflexible and almost (but not quite) incapable of innovation. That points to differences in brain structure, it will be interesting to look at the variation if we ever find a good endocast of a Neanderthal skull.
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They might have seen Sapiens using better units of measurements. Like "this stream is 45 arrows wide". Neanderthal Grog asked, "whats an arrow? how do you know how wide it is?". Sapien Somachandra Saravanamotto replied, "there is a standard arrow kept in the hut of Chief Kunta Kinte. All our arrow lengths are calibrated by measuring sticks calibrated by that standard arrow. " N G said, "too complex
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Well, there is a distinct lack of innovation over the very long period of time when they lived in Europe. Their Mousterian tool kit remained almost unchanged for 120,000 years, modern humans made more radical changes in the tools in their first 15,000 years in Europe. Most of their cultural and tool changes occurred during the last few thousand years of their existence, when they had at least limited interactions with the Cro-Mangon peoples.
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Neanderthals were humans.
Apples and Oranges??? (Score:2)
Those Permian temperatures are WAY hotter so there was likely a lot more going on back then.
I'm not suggesting we're OK but comparing Permian CO2/Global Temperature ratios to current Holocene amounts is at best misleading.
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Those Permian temperatures are WAY hotter so there was likely a lot more going on back then.
The earth is cooling so one would expect the ambient temperature to be higher ~250 million years ago. The atmosphere was also probably thicker leading to a greater greenhouse effect. So there certainly are other factors but the CO2/Global Temp ratio is not a bad factor to look at. The correlation might not be linear but it will still be an important consideration.
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My intuition is that a lot of limestone locked in that CO2 from so long ago. There was likely a lot more methane in the Permian air than today as well.
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The Sun is also warming so the black body temperature was a few degrees cooler. The internal temperature of the Earth likely didn't matter much as there were ice ages with perhaps ice sheets right to the equator.
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They are saying CO2 increases back then corresponded to a change in global temp from 25C (77F) to 40C (104F)
I can work quite happily at an ambient of 25C. Brain shutdown begins at 30C. I did manage to work at 40C when I was much younger. But the automatic PCB stuffing machine wouldn't have it. I looked in the manual. 40C max. I was in agreement, so I went home.
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Well, when the amount of CO2 goes up by an order of magnitude (aprox 400ppm to 4000ppm), you get quite a bit of warming. Warmer also means more H2O vapor, which is a more powerful greenhouse gas. OTOH, the Sun was cooler.
No PPM? (Score:3)
Surprised they didn't state a carbon PPM, I'm not sure what 36,000 gigtons of carbon really equates, but have a decent understanding of where we're at with carbon PPM, wouldn't that be a helpful metric, or am I missing something?
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You just need to be strong in your faith.
Which one? I have hard time keeping up with all the modern quasi-religions. Was it Church of Woke, BLM Gospel, LBQT+WTFBBQ Crusades, The Church of COVID and Later Day Masked Saints, The Church of Trust The Scientology? Please be more specific.
Re:No PPM? (Score:4, Funny)
You just need to be strong in your faith.
Which one? I have hard time keeping up with all the modern quasi-religions. Was it Church of Woke, BLM Gospel, LBQT+WTFBBQ Crusades, The Church of COVID and Later Day Masked Saints, The Church of Trust The Scientology? Please be more specific.
Sounds more like you belong in a more austere cult and need to join the Associate Reformed Trolls Church? or Maybe the Free Trolls Church of North America?
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need to join the Associate Reformed Trolls Church?
Got any details? I think I need some training. I tried to take the piss out of some Christians and New Age magic people, and the bastards agreed with me. Some people are so tolerant it drives you nuts.
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You just need to be strong in your faith.
Which one? I have hard time keeping up with all the modern quasi-religions. Was it Church of Woke, BLM Gospel, LBQT+WTFBBQ Crusades, The Church of COVID and Later Day Masked Saints, The Church of Trust The Scientology? Please be more specific.
Sounds more like you belong in a more austere cult
If that is a criteria, a clown college would do.
We're past the tipping point on so many things (Score:2)
Oh shit! (Score:2)
There goes the planet!
(considering we're already at 30 000 Gigaton released, and climbing fast)
https://www.theworldcounts.com... [theworldcounts.com]
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Yeah, you're right, my bad. I got Tera and Giga confused... Too many zeroes XD
Still, 40 Gigaton (one quarter to go) per year, that is 1 Teraton every 25th year.
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No, dinosaurs came out of that mass extinction, appearing on the scene about 15 million years later. Mammals took over after the CT mass extinction only 65 million years ago, and primates only became the dominant life form in our ecosystem about 5,000 years ago.
The sooner mass extinction happens (Score:2)
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The sooner mass extinction happens the better
Yes, I quite agree. I am evolving into a cockroach, so I won't have to listen to selfish twerps droning on about people droning on about the end of the world. The end of the world is nigh, but we haven't decided on the timescale yet.
Plus the other volcano crap (Score:2)
It wasn't just the CO2. I'm surprised the article only mentioned the carbon.
Also, it really peeves when someone uses the word "carbon" when they mean "carbon dioxide".
Ejecting 36,000 gigatons of elemental carbon over that time period would have been merely annoying
https://news.mit.edu/2011/erup... [mit.edu]
"The team analyzed melt inclusions from multiple rock samples, measuring the percentage of sulfur, chlorine and fluorine — typical volcanic gases — in each droplet. The researchers then calculated the t
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Also, it really peeves when someone uses the word "carbon" when they mean "carbon dioxide".
That drives me crazy every time.
"Until now, ... (Score:2)
Still is. More accurate now but still effectively just an educated guess.